We have our dalliances with all corners of things. There is no low or high any more anyway, simply a mix of things people are interested in and excited about. I'd hate for DiS to be closed-eared and exclude things based on them being too sophisticated or too 'dumb' or whatever (I mean, did you know Pitchfork have never covered Paramore, like, ever...?)

"Regardless, in the case of Canon in D legality is not in question as copyright disappears 70 years after the author’s death." - but almost any recording of it, even really old ones, will be copyrighted! So, stealing the tune and playing it on your own instruments is fine but sampling it is probably not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestra_hithttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestra_hit#TechnicalOrchestra hit is defined in the General Midi sound set.[18] It is assigned voice 55, in the ensemble sub group.
The Fairlight CMI synthesizer included a sampled orchestra hit voice, which was later included in many sample libraries.[11] The voice was given the name ORCH5, and was possibly the first famous orchestra hit sample.[19] The sound was a low-resolution, eight-bit digital sample from a recording of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite[7] – specifically, the chord that opens the "Infernal Dance" section, pitched down a minor sixth and at a reduced speed.[20] It was sampled by David Vorhaus.[20] Music magazine The Wire suggests that the prototype sample is owned by Vivian Kubrick.[21]

ie very often when you hear the "orchestra hit" sound come from a keyboard, you're hearing a Stravinsky sample:

The orchestra hit has been identified as a "hip hop cliché".[3] In 1990, Musician magazine stated that Fairlight's ORCH5 sample was "the orchestral hit that was heard on every rap and techno-pop record of the early 1980s".[4]

At school we studied Firebird for A Level music, and we'd often mess around with the keyboards during composition classes trying to recreate Infernal Dance, including the 'Orchestra hit' for the stabs...bit odd knowing this now.